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The details of the operation involved a direct incursion by several starships launched from Starbase 24 to the penal world of Rura Penthe, well within Klingon territory, and was expected to last no more than 24 hours with an acceptable loss to equipment and manpower.

The mission charts were created by Graphic Designer Michael Okuda, who years later elaborated on the origins of the ship's names and registry numbers:

"If I recall correctly, the charts visible on film/video listed only ship names and registry numbers. One can probably glean some class designations from the ship icons in the diagrams. I don't have the original art handy (I think it's archived on Syquest disks, which I don't have the ability to read, even if I could find the disks themselves), but I recall giving the info to Bjo Trimble, and I'm pretty sure she used most of it in her revised Star Trek Concordance. I might note that some of the ship registry numbers came from Greg Jein's interpretation of the starship chart in CommodoreStone's office in "Shore Leave" (TOS). Other registry numbers came from Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual or his Starship blueprints. In still other cases, the ships and/or numbers did not come from either source, but were consistent with some fleet status charts I did elsewhere on the USS Enterprise-A in Star Trek VI. (In other words, there's something that just about everyone will disagree with, but I also hoped that there would be at least something that almost everyone would agree with.) I should also point out that I prepared several charts for the rescue briefing scene, and that not all of them ended up in the final cut of the film. I don't recall which ones were used, or which ones ended up unseen. I do seem to recall that there was at least one chart that had quite a number of registries - mostly, I recall, from FJ's work - that ended up unused." [2]

The names listed in the roster of commanding officers, excepting that of Sulu, were all but one those of production staffers who had been working on The Undiscovered Country at the time. On a personal note, Okuda included a Captain D. Tathwell, which was the maiden name of his future wife Denise, who, at the time, was the one not yet working for the live-action franchise.

Okuda's remark regarding "Jein's interpretation" concerned the latter's influential "The Case of Jonathan Doe Starship"-article, Jein had written years earlier for a fanzine and in which he had postulated a starship registries numbering system. As Okuda has since then strictly adhered to Jein's interpretation, it was stark indication that he had only became aware of Jein's article during the time he was working on The Undiscovered Country. At the time, Jein had by then become the regular studio model vendor for Star Trek: The Next Generation, befriending Okuda, and was cooperating with him on his reference work, Star Trek Chronology, which was in development at the time.